PALMER — Choking back tears, Frank Adams told the family of Stacey Johnston he was sorry to have been responsible for her death.

“I will be tortured by this every day for the rest of my life,” Adams said.

“It’s still all about Frank, isn’t it?” David Johnston, father the victim’s daughter shot back from the viewing gallery, reiterating a common theme of the hearing — Adams’ selfishness. “I’d like to rip your head off.”

ROBERT DeBERRY/Frontiersman file Frank Adams at his murder trial earlier this year. He was sentenced Friday to more than 100 years in prison.

With an admonition from his attorney, Scott Sterling, not to argue with the family, Adams wrapped up his statement saying, “I hope someday maybe you can forgive me.”

Adams, 37, was convicted at trial in March of murder and tampering with physical evidence for first beating Johnston to death at their Chickaloon cabin, then trying to clean up the crime scene. Johnston’s bruised and bloodied body was found in the back of Adams’ hatchback during a drunken driving stop on the Glenn Highway.

Friday afternoon, Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler sentenced him to a 102-year prison term.

At his sentencing hearing, Adams wasn’t the only one choked up. Johnston’s mother, Martha Curlee, also spoke through tears as she described how much she misses her daughter’s sense of humor and the phone calls they shared.

Noting that Adams’ first statement to the police who arrested him was that he was having a bad day, Curlee told him, “I hope you have bad days for the rest of your life.”

Prosecutor Rachel Gernat argued that Adams’ history of violence in domestic relationships — during the trial, an ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend testified that they’d been battered — and the heinous nature of the crime justified the maximum possible sentence under Alaska law of 99 years in prison. She also asked for an additional three years for the tampering charge.

She pointed out that Adams even had a previous murder case on his record, one plea bargained down to manslaughter but in which he played an active role, beating Air Force Colonel Robert Cassell with a tire iron then cutting his throat in 1978 at the behest of a friend.

And it’s not like Adams was a fine upstanding citizen between his two murder cases, Gernat said.

“This is somebody who has book-ended 20 years of criminal convictions with murders,” she said. She said laws are in place to affirm that, “the state is not going to tolerate people being free who have committed multiple murders.”

She requested Adams not be eligible for discretionary parole and that he have to serve out the entire sentence. Cutler eventually granted that request, noting she couldn’t change the mandatory time off for good behavior, meaning that, by law, if Adams follows all the prison rules he his entitled to parole after 68 years of his sentence.

Speaking on Adams’ behalf, Sterling said that locking away Adams — 35 when the crime was committed — for the rest of his life didn’t serve justice.

“Implied in that decision would of course be a decision that at the age of 70, 75, 80, 85, 90 or 95 Mr. Adams would still be a danger to society,” he said.

If that was the judge’s decision, Sterling said, it would essentially be a sentence based on retribution.

“If that is the case then all we’re doing is eye for an eye. And if all we’re doing is eye for an eye we need to say so,” he said.

As a rebuttal, Gernat pointed out that the punishment would not equal the crime.

“Unless the defendant is brutally murdered it’s not an eye for an eye,” she said.

Cutler, in handing down the sentence, essentially agreed with everything Gernat said. A life lived in prison, she noted, it still a life.

“You can do a lot of things. You can be creative. You can interact. You can make things, sell things,” she told Adams.

Some might call a 102-year sentence an over-reaction, she said.

“But that’s not much of an overreaction. I think a lot of people would come to the conclusion that you are lucky we don’t have the death penalty in the state of Alaska.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.